Leigh High School Newspaper

Great America Halloween Haunt Review

It is autumn, which means it’s time for colorful leaves, candy corn, and of course, haunted houses. This year, Great America opened their annual ‘Halloween Haunt’ on Sep. 23. The 2016 Haunt offers eight mazes, four live shows, three scare zones, and other Haunt features such as the Skeleton Keys. The price of the entire experience varies on whether or not you have a season pass, how many people you bring, if you want a buffet ticket, upgrades, and extra costs. Many people come to discover what tricks Great America has up its sleeve.

After a hefty three hour wait to get into Great America during Halloween weekend, buying a fast lane pass for the attractions would be the best option to save time, and to experience more rides and mazes. The lines were long, and hours were limited to explore each Haunt attraction.

The mazes, as a whole, were very detailed and decorated with precision, with disturbing scenes throughout each maze, and the rate of jump scares differentiated with each one. Although there were a total of eight mazes, limited time restricted people to walk through three.

To begin with, the Corn Stalkers Maze brought fright from the farm to life, displaying a number of scarecrows and haunted barn scenes. The beginning and end of the maze held the most characters that popped out of corners you wouldn’t expect. However, the middle of the maze was somewhat dead, where no characters were found within the decor.

The Toy Factory Maze gained a reasonable amount of screams from the audience within the house, and the Great America staff did an impressive job bringing childhood memoirs into a haunted reality, with the distressed assortment of toys, walls of mirrors, and strobe lights shining upon your friends.

Lastly, the Slaughterhouse. This maze was definitely the most disturbing. Meat and blood were everywhere. The sights were so creepy that it would make you want to turn back. Jump scares were evenly distributed and had a concrete scare factor wherever you went.

More Halloween Haunt features included the scare zones stationed around the park so you would have to go through them to get somewhere you wanted to be. The scare zones made you question if you really wanted to go through them because of the mystery of what was in them.

Overall, Halloween Haunt receives a B+ because of the details of the attractions, characters, and the Great American experience.